Sovera

An hour and a half on T3! With an Invuln! With buffed enemies!

I had the same reaction. Spine Burst and Combustion from Fire Melee in Tankers is something that animates for much too long for the damage it produces.

If you want maximum protection look at Rad or Invuln (I vote for Rad for the varied utility, but Invuln is stupidly sturdy. Rad just examplars better and has more toys). There is actually a thread about it a bit lower down. Wanting maximum defensive value is perfectly acceptable, but, don't expect large damage in return. Just as metric (not because it is something that matters, but it serves as a measuring stick) there is a test we call a pylon, and an Invuln will usually put it down in 7-9 minutes. Fire Armor pushes things to around 3-4 minutes. I personally just want to be tough enough. For example, I soloed without deaths at maximum difficulty one of the end game taskforces. At that point is more sturdiness even needed? Would more sturdiness make a difference? If I already did not die being more sturdy would mean... I would not die harder? Instead I want to double my damage output (an Invuln would find it nearly impossible to duplicate the soloing I mention since with half the damage they would very difficultly be able to kill the end boss(es)). This is me though, personal choices and personal playstyle and etc. As for certain mobs debuffing defense yes. Each hit will shave about 7% defense off. If we are exactly at 45% then only 5% of the hits will go in. But once the first hits go in they shave 7% and we no longer are at 45%. That means it is now easier for more hits to happen, and they will continue shaving more and more defense. There are only two ways to combat this (three if I am to be pedantic): - Have a power set that has resistance to defense debuffing. Invuln has a little bit of this, Rad none at all, Fire none at all. SR has so much it is simply impossibly to lower its defense. - Have a lot and lot of defense that the 7% being shaved off still keep us above 45% (Invuln is a beast here since it gets -more- defense the more enemies are around). This eventually fails but depending on the duration of the fight it might make the difference... - ...which leads to the third way to combat this which is kill things dead before they kill you. Having defense being debuffed is not a big deal for Rad, Invuln and Fire since they are resistance based powers. Even with defense debuffed they are still negating 80-90% of the incoming damage. Rad Armor has a quick recharging heal (that triples as endurance recovery and can be slotted for damage) as well as a big absorb shield. Fire has a fast recharging heal. Invuln just has one heal that recharges in a minute (to be fair it hardly needs it once decently slotted). Now regarding your last question I would do neither SR/MA nor SR/Staff. SR by itself reaches huge defense numbers and does not need MA or Staff to get more defense. SR on a tanker is actually pretty sturdy, buuuut, it lacks a heal and lacks an endurance recovery power. These are things you'll miss out on though inspirations can take over. I would say a Rad/Claws or Invuln/Claws. Claws starts early, plays well, animates fast and examplars well. Martial Arts is not bad either with early AoE and etc. Make your choice and when you do don't feel shy to request a build since it is much better to get some tips on how to build so you can experience the game. And then, later, once you get the hang of it, you can make your own builds tailored to your playstyle. Just keep in mind what I said about being just tough enough to tackle content. If you intend to solo and explore the game killing things at twice the speed will be more entertaining than sanding enemies to death. At least level one Fire/Claws to 20 so you can have that benchmark to compare.

Fire/Katana has been a travel on FIRE (hehehe). Blitzed the leveling route completely. The only downside was leveling with only DA and Flashing Steel and neither are meant to be ST attacks which visibly shows. Burn carried the show. And I haven't touched an inspiration since Yin. I've also been thinking about the exemplaring problem. If we are at max level we have no purpose to give Gambler's Cut and Sting of the Wasp since Divine Avalanche, Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly make a complete ST rotation. If we are low level we have no access to Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly. Ergo if we don't mind spending TWICE THE CASH we can use the dual build system for low level (taking and slotting Gambler's Cut and Sting of the Wasp) and have a regular level 33+ build with Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly. And i could recover the slots from Flashing Steel for the 33+ build since Burn + Lotus Drops is enough AoE for me while filling with DA (keep defense up) and GD (mini AoE with FF proc). This would be daunting for a new player but for us with a billion in cash in bank it's a feasible solution.

The end game has Incarnates that cover the weak points of a build. Fire's squishyness marries itself very well with Barrier for a panic button when needed. Most of the time the set needs nothing to help itself but it has a weakness against psi attacks and too much defense debuffing. In both cases we can play, live off our heal, and when things look like they are really going pear shape, then use Barrier. Prior to end-game we don't have these fancy Incarnate options but the game is not run at max difficulty (+4) and for +1 difficulty nothing hurts enough. This isn't a special thing about Fire Armor, it's just what you get from playing a Tanker. What comes next (since all Tankers can and do this) is killing things in an orderly manner that hurries things along. Just keep in mind everything -will- work. Shield/MA and etc all will do their job and be sturdy. You can do all of these and ought to try them for kicks because 1000 slots for characters. I've tried most of the combos you speak of and in the end I just ended up liking this particular build more than the others. Selling Fire/Claws (but take all I say with a grain of salt because what I'm actually saying is that this build and playstyle fits -me-): - By level 20 you have all your tools. Everything from 20 and onwards is just more icing on the cake (such as replacing your weak level 1 attack for the much stronger level 28 attack). This means you have Burn and Spin and Follow-up. You wanted damage? You got damage. Dead things are not hurting you back. - Level 20 and you're set. Are you level 50 and want to help a friend run Positron at level 15? You still have all the tools (Spin, Burn, Consume, Healing Flames, Follow-up, Hasten) and just need to use the weak level 1 attack instead of the level 28 one. - Follow-up is not to be understated. Despite being a weak attack it's fast and adds a stacking 30% damage boost on top of more accuracy. This helps in the low levels when we lack slots. While it is weaker than a Build-up power it is on all the time. So even in the low to mid levels you're walking around with an extra 60% damage under your belt and it shows when you start a fight by stabbing something with FU, net yourself 30% damage, and then drop Burn and Spin. Now the thing is, if you're new and have no cash and are starting with nothing to your name then you'll be squishy, but, inspirations can and should take over, and once you start doing TFs money starts coming by selling merits and you can start buying the things you need to improve. The leveling guide of the Fire/Claws has what you ought to slot first. Some things may look like they cost a lot but that's only until you start selling your things (refer to the newbie guide). Just doing both initial task forces (level 8 and level 11) will be 5.5 mill ish. Not a fortune but you can buy generic IOs for all your powers and then as you progress buy the better stuff. For example the -second- taskforce will be near 12 million to your name once you sell the merits. If you decide to play on Everlasting (it's easy and gratis to swap servers, can do so 5 times a week) let me know and we can pew pew together.

Allow me to revise my 'Katana is horrid exemplaring'. I couldn't find enough people and duoed Posi 1 and it *tore* through the TF at +0x8. It's not a feat, but, it kinda is when done in the low levels with few slots and against said '-ToHit and then mage bubble making us unable to hit things and then we are whittled to death' which never happened. Divine Avalanche and Burn (with two procs and BU + Gaussian) carried us hard, but an honorable mention to Flashing Steel that let me me BU, FS, Burn, FS. Boss? What boss? Surrounding enemies? What surrounding enemies?

As mentioned above nothing will feel sturdy at those levels. By level 30-ish you should barely even touch your inspirations. Once you are max level and exemplar down to the low levels you carry all of those slots (if not all of the bonuses) and you will notice how much sturdy you are compared to how you were at the same level. My own advice is my favorite character: Fire/Claws. You will be study on the simple paradigm that you're killing the enemies too fast for them to be hurting you. And at level 30-ish you'll be able to not use inspirations at all. In the low levels you -should- be using (and abusing) inspirations. Purples (called Luck and variations of Luck) are more invaluable to surviving than greens since purples prevent damage. When in trouble eating two or three of these will prety much make you unkillable and you can easily replenish them for peanuts. I have both the link to the Fire/Claws build in my link (including 'cheap' leveling build and tips how to slot and what to pick first) as well as a guide for new players and how to make money with selling merits.

I loathe Devastating Blow. Too long animation and it does not feel impactful enough. But I'm the person who still does not feel ET is impactful enough to warrant the 2.9 animation. As for Avalanche I have no room for it. Avalanche -does- give better endurance (0.28 to 0.34) but I need the 6% Negative. If I changed Burn's slotting (but that would be heresy), or Irradiated Ground (but half the reason for taking Rad Melee is taking and proccing IG). I did find a slotting that allowed me to keep it all but then my accuracy dipped too much (even with Tactics toggled on) so it was a no go. Siphon does heal a nice bit, but it's one of those things ultimately without much use because when we take damage we take a lot of damage very fast (debuff situations). In moments like those what helps survival is -preventing- damage from happening (Parry, Divine Avalanche). Even nice fat heals like Siphon don't change things since they don't keep up with the damage. For example I tanked a duoed Market Crash and the last boss was not a problem (except the time I tried to DPS to the max and cut things too close by letting my HP reach 700HP instead of disengaging at around 1k as I usually do (but I wanted to do a leetle beeet more damage!) and the boss stunned me through my toggles and killed me. I was literally awash in mobs plus the AV and his auto-hits, and it was fine with my AoE killing the adds while I whittled the AV. And this was on the Fire/Claws. Would the heal from Rad Melee add anything? We have very few situations where we are slowly whittled and see death coming (exception: low level CoT where the -ToHit debuff mixes with the mage bubble for us to be unable to hit a single thing (thus unable to kill anything), and then the mages drop the -defense pulsing ground effect thing and we are whittled no matter how many inspirations we quaff. Running from the debuffs is the only solution). What we do have is quick damage such as reaching -30% or -50% (or in Fire Armor's case, fighting psi enemies such as Carnies) which is when 90% resists do nothing since the damage comes in too fast. At that point heals only cover our asses as we run off to let the debuff expire. Overall Katana might be the best pairing (horrid exemplaring though) because Divine Avalanche allows to remove a lot of the slotting placed in defense. It does open a hole in Smash damage though, and while most ranged damage is Lethal as a rule Energy/Negative is paired with Smash such as any energy blast, sonic attacks, some psi and etc. Without Ranged and without Smash we'd become open to ranged attacks, but this might not be a big problem since most factions are heavy on melee, and if we engage in melee they start hitting in melee instead of continuing to hit with ranged attacks (notable exception in those damn ICU(?) end game robots). When Katana uses one tap of Avalanche to softcap Lethal and Melee the second tap puts it 60%, and the third at 75%. While it can still be stripped it's a large buffer to overcome in a damage heavy build that will melt opponents.

I had to answer my own question. Same set up as before but switching Gloom for Contaminated Strike: - 3:20 - 3:53 - 3:35

@Bill Z Bubba! @Bill Z Bubba! Check this out! 😄 Fire Armor/Rad melee, all T4, no clickies. Using Reactive 75% chance of fire DoT: - 3:02 - 3:10 Using Degenerative: - 3:38 (bad luck streak here) - 2:59 (zoly crap, finally beat the 3 minute barrier) Both are still super close together beating the common knowledge that Degenerative was supposed to be the best option VS pylons. And just for luck Degenerative + Assault 65% chance: - 2:20 I used a rotation of Burn, Gloom, Radioactive Smash, Radiation Siphon, Radioactive Smash. Fit very neatly together. Gloom could be exchanged for Contaminate and free a butt load of slots for only the small price of going from 389 damage to 139. 😛 The numbers are not super incredible since they fit the norm (both Martial and Claws had times ranging between 3:15-3:30. Even EM had a 3:30 time, BUT, consider the set has the utility of a built-in heal AND it does passive AoE! Astoundingly good passive AoE. It might seem I'm being facetious with the AoE claim but anyone with a Fire/Rad knows of what I talk where Burn + burn patch + damage aura + Irradiated Ground is melting stuff around us while we focus on a boss. The ugly: I stripped the build so much to reach my goals that for once it actually detoggled while facing the pylon. I had to use Recovery Serums to do the tests as Consume did not keep up and I didn't even have Tough or Tactics turned on (not much reason to use Tactics anyway, other than niche reasons, as it is a mule). In multi target scenarios Consume kept up better but it was still touch and go waiting for Consume to finish recharging. Which makes sense since the build is so stripped down (damn those Kinetic Combats). There's room for improvement in that aspect as even a single Kinetic Combat being taken off would help with slotting. It might finally be a case of taking Cardiac. MAYBE. Because as long as Recovery Serums and Consume can be alternated (Recovery Serum is not perma) and the Serum is worth 10k a charge there is no reason to GOT TO SUCH EXTREMES! I also removed Atom Smasher since I needed all the slots I could scrounge. I went to test in a Comic Con and it cleared well but having Atom Smasher would have helped.

No clickies. I always cheat and create a SG to get the KB protection from the base empowerment.

Slotted the Fire/EM. Took it to the test server and T4ed it. No clickies used. Reactive Interface = 4 minutes. Degenerative = 3:28 minutes

And that's why I'm stopping. Nothing beats this combo as an all arounder and my brief altitis burst has shown this. This is another thing. Mids' numbers always confused me. What do they even mean? When I use them it is just to compare since they never seem to match what I get in game.

Looking at Fire/Katana the only thing I can really point a finger is at how badly it exemps. One tap of Divine Avalanche softcaps and more stacks will just help with defense debuffs. This in turns frees so much slotting that Hasten goes down to 125 seconds. Easy rotation with a 0.2 gap of Divine Avalanche, Soaring Dragon, Golden Dragonfly. Nice place for a FF proc. But dat exemplaring. All the way up to 35 with only Flashing Steel, Divine Avalanche and Burn. We -could- take and/or slot the T1/T2, in a world with infinite powers and slots, but if exemped to at least 33 those powers and slots would gather dust uselessly.

Using Barrage would free a power letting me take Vengeance to mule my last LotG. Still something to ponder. As for ET and Mids I've no idea. It starts as 495 with no Musculature and no slots. Jumps to 918 with five Hectacomb (but no damage proc), 1052 with Musculature, then 1171 with Hecta's purple damage proc and Touch of Death. Then 1630 with Fiery Embrace, and finally 2595 with both FE and BU.

Finally dinged 50 on the Fire/EM. Didn't respec into the final build yet, but I hope it picks up because ET is still not impressive at all despite the Mid numbers. I'm not even looking at log numbers but the simplest thing of popping BU (with Gaussian) and then hitting with ET and going meh at taking 1/5th of a +1 boss' HP. With the hype and the Mid numbers... dunno. That said six Mako (one lethal proc) while leveling is not five Hectacomb (purple damage proc) plus a Touch of Death damage proc and maybe that's what it needs to feel more impressive. But that's like Burn. It's fine while leveling but it really takes off with two damage procs, one of them a purple.

It's barely ahead of EP! Or even Bone smasher!

Away with your low DPA TF!

According to Mids EP ends, fully slotted and procced, as doing 245. Barrage with the same slotting has 318. Using EP will give me a 1 second gap. With EP animating in one second I -could- use one extra EP making it three EPs for 735 as opposed to two Barrage for 636. Burn, EP, ET, EP, Bonesmasher, EP, Burn.

The pylons will hurt everybody since if I recall correctly they pulse an auto-hit toxic DoT that stacks (but don't quote me) so if you feel your DM/SR is being shived in the kidneys while you're hitting it you'd be absolutely correct. As a rule I hit Barrier before engaging the pylons and the first and second don't hurt much, while the third forces me to use a heal. Dying isn't something that happens. As for the clockwork, he is not a menace. I have a big psi hole but he does not hit hard enough or often enough to overcome my healing. And, again, Barrier before the start of the fight does wonders. The game lacks an Incarnate version of Barrier/Ageless that goes 'click it, you're now at damage cap and then it dwindles until you're at 20% damage for the last minute'. If there was there would be a paradigm shift where we could build sturdy for everything and then use it for burst. (I'm not actually advocating for such an incarnate as it would be a terrible thing for the game's health). Not having it we have the opposite: build for damage and when in trouble use Barrier to be safe. In your case you can be really tough with SR, but then lack that Incarnate I mentioned above to push your damage. To be clear I don't use Barrier on CD to reach 45% even. I tend to do whatever content just as I am and it's only if in trouble that I pop Barrier. Even with Barrier I wouldn't be able to solo the ambush on top of the hill at the first ITF mission without the Incarnate invulnerable pet to share agro (where Invuln and SR would laugh at said ambush), but we can agree that 20+ +3 bosses that debuff recharge and defense is not a common situation (and again, Incarnates help me pass it).

I went to look at it again and I'll stick with Barrage. I have a tight rotation of Burn, ET, Barrage, Bone Smasher Barrage that juuuust barely covers Burn's recharge. Using EP would just have me use a weaker attack and get a one second gap.

Uh, I thought it was Barrage. Well, okay then, time to tweak the build.

You wouldn't have like Romulus and the fluffies either. On my Bio Scrappers it's auto-hit, auto-hit, use Ablating, auto-hit-auto-hit, use DNA Siphon, auto-hit-auto-hit, start using greens while waiting for Ablating to recharge. At some point the greens end -_- Same with the seafood squad as they ablate the elemental defenses and leave us with the 10-20% Negative resists to handle their damage. As I only played Bio for a while the ITF was my big Achille's heel and I used to be astounded at seeing people soloing the cysts.

Used it as filler until ET.

Speaking of EM, I finally reached 35 to get ET. ... Not impressed. After all the brouhaha I was expecting more oomph when I six slotted it out of something that locks me out for three seconds. I mean, yeah, I can see it does nice damage, but it also costs me three seconds. I guess it needs two damage procs since with the recharge and animation the purple proc will have a 90% chance and a regular one 77% so that will add more. Other than that EM has been a pleasant ride. Definitely not the worst variant. Burn helps with EM's weaker AoE and also as a filler. At the moment I find I can Burn, ET, Bone Smasher, Barrage, gap, Burn. But I'm still leveling and hard on slots.