Sovera

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:

With all the fixes it seems a lot more interesting. Does it still exemplar horribly? What is the new rotation like? Last I read there was a small bug with Crushing Blow generating momentum. Has someone tested a TW tanker on a pylon and has some numbers?

Woo, updates! There is still some weirdness with TFC though: Actually it looks like we may need to re-do some builds as they are funky with all prestige powers still visible, TFC linked to a sprint, heck I no longer have Energy Focus inherent visible in my EM tanker. Birthing pangs though. Is there a way we can tweak the color scheme back to how it was? Call me old but I liked it. Found the color options in the configuration, I'll try to remember how it used to look and tweak it. Small bug: the program does not remember custom colors we have set. I also noticed that Blood Frenzy's inherent in Savage Melee did not impact the calculations of a build's recharge or endurance cost. It might do with a scale as well.

We'd need a build to see what you were using or what could use fixing. I'm going to guess a big lack of procs in the attacks even though SR does not help (with pylons) either.

I don't think Bio really adds much other than the +damage adaptation. I would either go with Shield to be an all rounder of damage boosting + survival, or Fire Armor for extra boom. It was just Claws but a FA Tanker always came out on top compared to a Bio tank when doing pylon tests. I found Rad Melee pretty mediocre on a tank. The animations are too long and though it is chockful of utility and a great mass AoE destroyer it is not particularly strong in soloing tough targets. Claws or EM will do the trick. Claws as the all rounder with AoE and ST. EM as the ST specialist (the difference between the two is not super huge on a tanker but in my testing it does down a pylon about 30 seconds sooner). There was a time Titan Weapons was -the- beast to do anything and that included the killing of GMs but after the recent tuning pass it received I don't know how well it came out. I do know it became much better to actually play it.

As I said somewhere else Fire Melee will never take a full rework to be 'good' because Fiery Embrace from Fire Armor exists. Boosting damage by 100% for 20 seconds will always be lurking in the background. FE needs either to disappear or be reworked so that what it does for non-Fire sets is what it does for Fire damage, AKA add a percentage of extra damage. As everyone has pointed over and over Fire Melee is just bad at the moment. It needs a complete rework. Shorter DoTs, MORE damage since it has zero utility, defensive value, or even places to slot -res procs. And it needs to have the animations trimmed down. I saw that the set was being tweaked several months back but the changes were discarded. I did not get to see what the changes were though, but hopefully instead of gimmicks it was based on a solid foundation.

No. Several secondaries have taunt auras, it is only the older sets who do not. Unfortunately this can be confusing.

Proc bombing Burn makes a difference. Since it costs almost no endurance it plays very well with that approach. I have looked several times at Total Focus thinking about proccing it more but it has a hefty endurance cost and is the linchpin of the attack rotation so it needs to be up. Energy Transfer also has no endurance requirements and since it is meant to be used after TF it means it has no recharge requirements. It should be doing less damage than Mids shows since the fast version will castrate the numbers shown by the slow animation. Bopper said they will look into changing the proc calculation numbers between slow and fast versions. Burn carries Fire Armor. Once they fix the double proc chance Fiery Embrace will not be enough, IMO, to warrant using FA. Might as well go Shield and get the scaling damage aura while also becoming near impervious without all the wacky slotting I subject FA to.

This is a cross post from another thread, but those interested in a Fire/EM Tanker won't be looking for it in a Fire/Claws builds so I am giving it its own crib: So, with the changes to EM it behooved me to give it a try. I leveled a(nother) Fire Armor/Energy Melee and soloed it through the different TFs to 50 after an initial boost to level 20. I have three end-game builds. They all work so I will leave them up. They all rely on two stacks of the Might of the Tanker +res proc combined with Barrier to reach 90% to all res. If the content is not hard enough then there is no reason to use Barrier, but it also means it is not difficult enough to warrant having 90% resistances. Regardless if the Might of the Tanker procs a third time then resistances are capped. It also has close to 40% Smash/Slash defense which with Barrier becomes a permanent 45% (softcap) to most of the damage in the game. I did just a quick and dirty two pylon tests, no clickies, T4 45% Musculature, T4 Hybrid Assault not clicked (I need to test which one is better, will post it later), T4 75% debuff Degenerative: - No Gloom and non proc based Burn: 3:15 - 3:20. Considering there is no -res shenanigans not bad, but the loss of the procced out Burn is ow. As a bonus better endurance as well with only Tough needing to be turned off (played with FA on) for three minutes of non stop hitting: - Gloom and procced out Burn: 2:30 - 2:40. Worse endurance but with Consume this is not a problem. Did not have Tough turned on but still had to turn off Tactics as well since I did not want to use Consume mid test. This is the most damaging of the three in no small part due to Gloom being so good. I would not subject myself to the more exotic content without FA but if usually just farming Council or only teaming, or even carrying a few yellows, then this should still be fine: - Barrage and procced out Burn: 2:52 messily done (I even used Whirlwind Hands instead of Burn one time :D) - 2:34. Overall Gloom is better (no surprise when we compare the numbers between Gloom and Barrage) but Focused Accuracy makes for a better all rounder IMO. A better slotting of Barrage also helps for leveling and exemplaring instead of relying on Gloom to fill the gaps in the rotation, and FA protects from Arachnos' smoke grenades to Hurricaning witchies/Tsoo and Banished Pantheon/CoT -ToHit spamming. This is the build I will be personally using: The rotation is Burn, Total Focus, Bone Smasher, Energy Transfer, Barrage, Bone Smasher. Repeat. For AoE just spam WH and Burn while squeezing TF and EF on bosses in between. This is what I leveled with. I did not fine comb it so use common sense (replace level 50 IOs with 25, etc). If there is a request I can make a cheapo leveling build. Burn and TF are the big hitters so six slot them ASAP. I have more information for newcomers over here. I may not be singing praises to the build like I was for Claws but it is more because I am jaded now. It is still nice big numbers for a tank. To put it in perspective I have several Scrappers and even Stalkers who have 2:30 times so picking a Tanker as a character does not need to mean slow whittling of enemies.